


Good Night, My Love

by mydogwatson



Series: WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Fall, Pre-Slash, Sadness in London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is leaving London, but first...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Night, My Love

**Author's Note:**

> Story number two for today.

If you should awake in the  
still of the night, please have  
no fear. Just close your eyes,  
then you will realise that my  
love will watch over you, always.  
-Harry Connick, Jr.

Three A.M.

My last night in London for what was sure to be a long time. Maybe forever. If I cared to do so, I could no doubt calculate the precise odds that my mission would come to a successful conclusion so that I could come back to the city I love.

Come back to the life I love.

I could have done those calculations, yes, but I chose not to. There was no need to depress myself further.

Instead, I let myself into the front door and climbed the so-familiar steps, knowing just where to place my feet so that there was no sound to give me away. For an hour there had been no movement or noise at all in the flat. The lights were out. He had not closed the curtains, so the moon and the streetlights provided enough illumination.

If Mycroft had known what I was doing, he would have cuffed and gagged me and then personally bundled me onto the secret flight to Moscow. He needn’t have worried. I had no intention of not being on that flight. There was no other choice open to me.

But I would not leave London, leave everything that mattered behind, without doing one last thing.

I actually had one foot on the steps leading up to John’s room when I somehow realised that he was not in there. Instead, I backed down and then silently pushed open the door to my own room. He had not closed the curtains here either and a shaft of moonlight spilled over my bed. And John.  
He was lying curled in the middle of the bed, sleeping. Or passed out. From the smell of alcohol that permeated the room there seemed little fear that he would awaken any time soon. John was drinking too much and with his family history that was very bad news indeed; just another thing for me to feel guilty about.

I crept to the side of the bed and sank to my knees.

This close to him I could see the new lines on John’s face, still there even as he slept. The skin around his eyes was reddened and puffy.

I froze as a whimper escaped his mouth. He was dreaming. His lips shaped the word “No” although no sound came. It was not difficult to know the content of his nightmare. It was not a wise thing to do, but I raised a hand and rested it lightly against his hair. Amazingly, it seemed to calm him down. This was neither the time nor the place to think about what it did to me. Not when I was about to set off on a most dangerous journey.

The anguish that had filled his voice during out last phone conversation would always be in my own nightmares, I knew.

Watching John at the cemetery was the most painful thing I have ever done. Mycroft was far from happy about that escapade and he let me know it. He’d expected me to stay in his underground bunker, plotting, tracing the most recent paths of the people I needed to find, making all the preparations for the ridiculous quest upon which I was about to embark.

But I felt obligated. The very least I could do, after everything else I had done, was bear witness to what John was going through. I owed him that much.

The cemetery visit had been for John, although he would never know about it. This, tonight, was an act of complete selfishness.

I wanted to see him once more.

He was snoring lightly now.

I leaned closer. “John, I hope one day you can forgive me,” I whispered. “But even if you can’t, you’ll still be alive. That matters to me. More than anything. I never told you…”

My words dwindled off.

I inhaled, taking in the familiar scents that defined John to me. I could have found him in a dark room, just by the smell of tea and regrettably inexpensive aftershave, and….John. There was so much I’d never told him. Probably he never would have wanted to hear most of it.

And now it was too late.

But now I wanted---needed---to say the words anyway. Again, it was a purely selfish act.

If I did not survive all that was coming, as seemed very likely, I did not want to die never having said those words to anyone. John was the only person to whom I had ever wanted to say them.

I bent even closer, until my lips were practically touching his ear. “I love you,” I breathed into him. “I love you.”

When I pulled back, it was shocking to see that his eyes were open. Had I just destroyed the entire plan and put John in jeopardy again? Even as I was cursing myself for allowing sentiment to rule my head, I realised that John was still mostly asleep. There was absolutely no recognition or consciousness in his gaze.

“Love you, too,” he mumbled, before turning onto his side and beginning to snore again.

Numbly, I pushed myself up from the floor and gave his hair one more gentle touch, before making my way out of the room. Once safely out of the room, I leaned against the wall just for a moment, John’s words still ringing in my ears. I put the words and the sound of his voice into a safe corner of the Palace, easily accessible, so that I would be able to listen to them again and again and again. Then I closed my eyes and let 221B sink into my bones, wondering how long I could keep John’s scent in my nose.

Then, with a sigh, I tightened my scarf, gave one last look back into the bedroom, one last look at John, before pulling the door closed again and leaving the flat as silently as I had arrived. It was time for the flight to Moscow.

fini


End file.
